The food questions did it. Of the choices, I liked seafood best as an entree. And then there's dessert....

I lost my sweet tooth ages ago and generally don't do dessert. Flan was simply the one I found least repellent. I prefer my sugars fermented, in beer. But since I like the taste of beer, I prefer not to have it with meals, which excludes one of the otherwise obvious-looking dinner choices.

But if I interpret the dinner question more liberally, and select that obvious choice (the "meat, potatoes, and beer"), I pop up Irish.

Except for that blurb about "drink[ing] everyone under the table", I like that outcome much more. After all, my wife is Irish!

The Christian god can easily be pictured as virtually the same god as the many ancient gods of past civilizations. The Christian god is a three headed monster; cruel, vengeful and capricious. If one wishes to know more of this raging, three headed beast-like god, one only needs to look at the caliber of people who say they serve him. They are always of two classes: fools and hypocrites...

I have examined all the known superstitions of the world, and I do not find in our particular superstition of Christianity one redeeming feature. They are all alike founded on fables and mythology. Millions of innocent men, women and children, since the introduction of Christianity, have been burnt, tortured, fined and imprisoned. What has been the effect of this coercion? To make one half the world fools and the other half hypocrites; to support roguery and error all over the earth... [bold added]

This quote reminds me a bit of a turn of phrase that someone near and dear to me in my youth would sometimes use to describe Southern Baptists. (I was born and raised in Mississippi.) They weren't "practicing Baptists", but "practicing hypocrites".

A Fitting Tribute

I see that the "Palestinians" recently honored the memory of Al Gore's fellow Nobel Laureate, Yasser Arafat, in the most fitting way possible:

At least six people have died in gunfire at a rally in Gaza City organised by Fatah to mark three years since the death of Yasser Arafat.

7 comments:

Justin
said...

Gus,

I loved that Jefferson quote so much I wanted to share it with some friends of mine. So I went to look up the actual source from which it came -- and found out it's not real! At least according to the Monticello website.

The other quotes that they list as similar, however, have some good tidbits: "...Man, once surrendering his reason, has no remaining guard against absurdities the most monstrous, and like a ship without rudder is the sport of every wind. With such persons gullability which they call faith takes the helm from the hand of reason and the mind becomes a wreck."

Depending on what I did for dinner and dessert, it called me French or Dutch. But really, having to choose between the chicken and the seafood--thank goodness there are alternate days! (Like you I don't have much of a sweet tooth, but I do like chocolate and occasionally a piece of apple pie.) French or Dutch...I can live with that.